When the clock struck 4 on Thursday afternoon, my life changed forever.
I was out on the patio enjoying a snowy barbecue of various pork products while praying to Jesus and drinking a beer, as all true Canadians are wont to do in the early spring. Suddenly, without warning, several Mounties emerged from behind a snowbank and overturned my grilled meats. They dumped my beer onto the ground and forced me to bow in the direction of Mecca and punted my dog into space. It was then that I realized the terrible truth.
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It was no longer March 23, 2017. It was 24 Jumada al-Akhirah, 1438, and the Liberal motion condemning Islamophobia had just passed in the Canadian House of Commons in a vote of 201-91. We are all fundamentalist Muslims now.
The pox is upon our houses. We foolishly believed that a non-binding motion condemning anti-Muslim bigotry in the wake of a devastating shooting at a Quebec City mosque was similar to previous motions condemning specific religious discriminations like anti-Semitism that had been passed by the Canadian Parliament. But, by Allah, how we were wrong. If only we had listened to the warnings.
Read more: We Spoke to the MP Behind M-103 About the Threats She Has Received
It has been a difficult period of adjustment. There are only three channels. The CBC is just a 15 minute clip of our serene caliph Justin Trudeau and the Liberal cabinet praying beneath the Peace Tower on an endless loop. They have replaced the Weather Network with Quranic Studies directed by Kathleen Wynne. The third is MUCH and they only play The Tragically Hip but in an ironic twist, alcohol is banned now so the music is unlistenable.
We can only eat chickpeas now. It is a curse. I open the cupboard and I find only cans of chickpeas. I put a bag of popcorn in the oven and I pull out a bag of cumin-covered chickpeas. I go to pour milk on my cereal and I discover I am pouring hummus over a bowl of falafel. They will not give me any pickled turnip until I have performed the Hajj.
Photo via Mack Lamoureux
Bacon-wrapped scallops are a distant dream. A friend of mine burst into flames when he put a hotdog to his lips. Every day is a fresh and porkless hell.
We have to count the small blessings. The ritual purifications we must constantly perform before our five daily prayers means all toilets are now equipped with bidets and wow how did we ever get along in a society where everyone cleaned the dirtiest part of their body with a dry paper towel instead of water, holy fuck toilet paper is stupid.
They tried to tell us M-103 was the beginning of something evil, the death knell of free speech and the end of our Canadian way of life. I sneered that you’d have to be a complete fucking idiot to believe that this is the beginning of a blasphemy law. I replay those foolish words in my head every day that I huddle in my unheated garage after my house was handed over to a family of Syrian refugees.
Read more: M-103 Is Not Going to Force a Sharia Blasphemy Law on Canada, Duh
Our only hope now lies in the Rebel Commander. In the hookah lounges that fill the old bars downtown, they whisper tales that Ezra Levant and his holy warriors escaped the crackdown and still broadcast messages of hope and liberation from a ham radio. The stories of Faith Goldy’s crusades in Israel keep our spirits afloat. Ezra nearly saved us before and he will save us yet, insha’Allah.
But then, maybe it is too late. We wouldn’t listen when literally tens of rejects in Soldiers of Odin garb massed outside our legislatures, clutching their pearls and screaming the non-gender neutral lyrics to ‘O Canada’ like it was an exorcist ritual. We ignored all the paranoid, hyperbolic fantasies peddled through grainy Youtube videos about how this was the thin end of the wedge of a bloodthirsty Islamic horde hungering to destroy Canadian Values. We ignored their call for a new crusade, and look where it got us.
A symbolic offering of solidarity to Canadian Muslims, a small light of human dignity in a darkening Western world. Recognition that they are the target of rampant, violent hatred for who they are and what they believe; acknowledgement that this has been inflamed by the victory of small-minded ethnonationalism from people who fear them and death-worshipping ideologues who falsely claim to represent them. A promise, however warped by the gears of the bureaucratic machine, that their government will try to protect their rights to life and liberty from the mob justice that want to strip them away.
Despicable. What were our politicians thinking?
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